Tiger Woods 13 PGA TOUR and CE Info

[Aristo]

I did not know about the 510 cap to distributed attributes. That's actually pretty cool, although if I'm crushing balls and scoring as low a -7 now, what kind of scores can I expect at 85's across the board.

The problem is, I don't to play in windstorms and on carnival greens with no grids. Yes it will increase my score, but it also stops feeling like real golf. As I posted before, I did complete a round of nine holes at Kiawah at par while playing without grids, and my putting was still sub 70. But it wasn't actually fun trying to read the green that way. The graphics just don't lend themselves to this very well.

There is a problem with how golf games provide progression. As you get better, you receive more XP. That then makes it easier to to perform the same actions. So by the time you have gotten pretty good, the mishit windows have gotten really small. A new guy, with no XP or skills, has the largest mishit windows. It just creates issues with game balancing. New players feel outmatched in completely unrealistic ways, and experienced player begin achieving nearly perfect rounds.

Right now, I feel like I am in a sweet spot in terms of difficulty vs. fun. That par at Kiawah was really fun, except that my opponent scored a -11 over the same nine holes. Same tournament difficulty. Same gridless greens. Not only do I not want to play guys that good regularly, I don't want to be that guy. If I scored that well, I would quit the game.

So I am worried that game balancing is going to be an issue moving forward that will shrink the amount of time I enjoy the game.

[Leadfoot5]

And it is possible to putt without grids. Just takes practice - similar to turning all the meters off.

Really? Is there a camera angle I'm missing? How does one read the break without the grid? I'm all for a stiff challenge, but no putting grid seems impossible.

[DChaps]

After missing the F1 2011 racing last night due to a work emergency, I ended up playing TW 13 for another 3 hours or so, again with no freezes at all. I played round 2 of the DSP Weekly at East Lake and this time shot an 85. One thing that is driving me crazy is that on the online Weekly or Dailys there is no ability to see your actual hole by hole scorecard. Not during the round by hitting pause, or after the round is complete. Especially for a 4 round tournament I like to be able to see what holes I am doing poorly on and where I had double bogeys, birdies, etc. I career or offline matches I can see the scorecard hole by hole so I don't understand why it would not let you see that playing online matches. At least in the summary page and the end of the round it would be nice to see how may pars, birdies, bogeys, double dogeys, etc. It does not even show you that. Has this always been the case for TW on the consoles?

PS - As long as I am complaning , I really wish that it actually tracked your rounds per course so that as you view each summary page for the course, you could drill down to see the scorecard for each round, along with conditions, difficulty, etc.

..... A new guy, with no XP or skills, has the largest mishit windows. It just creates issues with game balancing. New players feel outmatched in completely unrealistic ways, and experienced player begin achieving nearly perfect rounds.

Don't I know it. By the way, how are you guys getting to over 60-70 in Power or Putting? I finished 3 rounds of 18 last night online and the most XP I received in any round was 741. At over 50, that is just letting me go up one or two points in only one or two categories per 18 rounds. It seems I am going to have to put in ALOT of rounds of golf to get into the 70's in each category.

I still don't understand how the boost pins work and how I am buying them/refilling or whatever. I played an offline round at Kiawah with the 5X XP Pin Boost or whatever as well as Power Boost and Overall Boost. Only received 748 XP for that. Likewise, I thought by using the overall attribute pin boost and the power boost that I would be killing the ball off the tee. I actually hit it much shorter and overall played much worse than the 18 rounds at East Lake that I had put in for the DSP Weekly. I did not feel like the Pins did anything that I could see tangibly in my game. And using the 5 XP Boost I did not get but 8 more XP than I did in my normal round at East Lake. Is there anywhere that explains what the boost pins actually do and when/why to use them?

[TheTruth]

And it is possible to putt without grids. Just takes practice - similar to turning all the meters off.

Really? Is there a camera angle I'm missing? How does one read the break without the grid? I'm all for a stiff challenge, but no putting grid seems impossible.

Well, you always know your distance and elevation. I always first check my slope angle. You do that by pushing down on the left stick (not clicking) and it will zoom in on your ball - giving you a ground level look to the hole. It will also give you the degree of slope. If it is above it will break left, if it is below it will break right. The higher the degree slope the bigger the break. The longer the putt the more difficult the read because it may have multiple breaks.

I then usually push up on the left stick and then use the stick to turn the camera to look for breaks. You can even rotate the camera behind the hole looking back at you to try to read the green. In this view you can also zoom in and out by clicking in the right or left stick(can't remember for sure).

The rest is playing experience just like in real life. The more you play the more familiar you are with the greens.

[DivotMaker]

There is a problem with how golf games provide progression. As you get better, you receive more XP. That then makes it easier to to perform the same actions. So by the time you have gotten pretty good, the mishit windows have gotten really small. A new guy, with no XP or skills, has the largest mishit windows. It just creates issues with game balancing. New players feel outmatched in completely unrealistic ways, and experienced player begin achieving nearly perfect rounds.

So I am worried that game balancing is going to be an issue moving forward that will shrink the amount of time I enjoy the game.

Here is what I am seeing as I am closing in on 100 rounds played....

As my CAG gets more attributes, I am finding it harder and harder to hit the ball straight. My CAG currently is:

Power: 92
Accuracy: 91
Workability: 62
Spin: 71
Recovery: 62
Putting: 63

Unlike previous years where it got easier to hit the ball far and straight, I am finding that it is more of a challenge to hit far and straight than in years past. My 2nd round at the ELGC Weekly is testament to that. I was -7 coming to the par 5 9th. Hit my drive into the trees on the left. Took 2 shots to get back to the fairway and somehow salvaged a bogey. For the next 6 holes, I hit every drive into the rough and made 5 consecutive bogeys. Somehow got on the right track on the last 3 holes and birdied out to go -5. To me, that sounds like a Rory McIlroy round at Augusta from last years Masters. VERY frustrating, but it does illustrate that I don't think the game is getting any easier as I improve my attributes. Is anyone else seeing this?

[TheTruth]

To be honest, I haven't noticed anything like that. The only attribute I could really see improvement has been power, and maybe accuracy since I bumped mine up to 76 seems like my approaches are a little better. Putting I could not tell a difference, or worse even.

Divot, do you know if the green grid is suppose to get better as your putting increases like in the past? Or does it effect the sensitivity of the putting stroke now? When I had my putting in the 70's it felt like my stick sensitivity was a little more refined, but that messed with my head and it seemed like I putt worse so I moved it back down.

Here are my stats (best I can remember)
Power: 88
Accuracy: 76
Workability: 46
Spin: 61
Recovery: 55-60
Putting: 60

[DivotMaker]

I think the grid gets more refined and the squares smaller, but TBH, I have not noticed. I think the sensitivity of the putting stroke improves a bit, but like the grid, I have not really noticed. I don't plan on getting my putting attributes up much more than I currently have as I feel like the putting is very much a user-execution process more than anything which I have been wanting to see for years. IOW, I think the putting is such at that it is strictly up to execution of the analog stick with the different impacts of tempo and overswing. I can still miss a putt badly if I hit it with overswing and/or too much or not enough tempo. I really like the "feel" in the putting mechanism right now.

[DivotMaker]

Nice round on the daily Ortho. I missed several birdies by inches - wouldn't be surprised to see a -12 or better round on this one.

EXCELLENT ROUND Ortho! You too HOGZ!

[orthostud23]

Nice round on the daily Ortho. I missed several birdies by inches - wouldn't be surprised to see a -12 or better round on this one.

EXCELLENT ROUND Ortho! You too HOGZ!

Thanks guys!!

And it is possible to putt without grids. Just takes practice - similar to turning all the meters off.

Really? Is there a camera angle I'm missing? How does one read the break without the grid? I'm all for a stiff challenge, but no putting grid seems impossible.

Well, you always know your distance and elevation. I always first check my slope angle. You do that by pushing down on the left stick (not clicking) and it will zoom in on your ball - giving you a ground level look to the hole. It will also give you the degree of slope. If it is above it will break left, if it is below it will break right. The higher the degree slope the bigger the break. The longer the putt the more difficult the read because it may have multiple breaks.

I then usually push up on the left stick and then use the stick to turn the camera to look for breaks. You can even rotate the camera behind the hole looking back at you to try to read the green. In this view you can also zoom in and out by clicking in the right or left stick(can't remember for sure).

The rest is playing experience just like in real life. The more you play the more familiar you are with the greens.

Like Hogz said you really can go gridless and get a good sense for what the green is doing. I play my career with no grids and my best reads are from behind the hole. I read the putt, give a guess to how much break I feel I need to play and go with it. IRL you do the same thing so its really no different, and as IRL sometimes you read too much or not enough break and miss the putt.

[J_Cauthen]

This has been an outstanding week of play in the life of the DSP CC. The Daily at Pinehurst this week was easily the most competitive and realistic scoring tournament we've played. The gap between first and last was also the lowest it's been in any of our tournaments I can recall. It was fun watching the scores get posted as that Daily progressed, because you knew it was still very much there for the taking.

The weekly at East Lake has produced some wacky ways to shoot a decent score for me. In today's -6 round, I had a four putt green, and two three putts. I holed a lot of 15 to 20 footers for par as well. I can tell that others are bouncing quite a bit with East Lake. Tim's encounter with the woods in round two sounds all to familiar with me from Tiger 12, but so far, I haven't had anything quite that devastating in 13.

Today's Daily at Greenbriar proved to me once again that this course has me by the short ones! Greenbriar is a course that everyone seems to tear up in this series... except me. The lowest I've ever shot there is a 63, but my average is more like 69. I just can't quite figure it out, but its stranglehold over me continued today. I put up a lot of birdies in today's round, but had a lot of bogies and a double to boot. I had to birdie the last hole for a -2.

The next Daily is at Whistling Straights. I've got it set for live weather, gusts, Hard-2 pins, slow greens,and short short rough. This course has had some wacky pin placements in the past, hopefully the slow greens will offset them somewhat if these pin settings are carnival-esque.

Finally, I guess everyone has built up enough coins now to "rent" a DLC course or two. I'd like to propose a Daily at a DLC course that DSP'ers could rent with their coins. How does this idea strike you guys, and what course would you want to rent for a DSP CC Daily? We're running out of Collector's Edition courses in the next few days.

One more item... how does the idea of a DSP CC 9-hole match play, head to head night this Wednesday strike you? We need to get some head to head matches going for our club achievement and I think this would be a lot of fun to knock out some quick matches within our club. The problem is that matches you create in your club lobby really aren't private. If you want the matches to be ranked, which I think does more good for our club's status, they have to be public. We'd just have to make sure that we have club members present in our lobby when the match was setup, so they could join the match before someone else jumped in. Just a thought... gotta head off to work now. I'll check back in when I get home in the AM. Keep knocking 'em stiff!

[TheTruth]

I'm up for whatever JC. Wednesday night match night sounds great to me. Been wanting to play some for awhile. Played a random last night and sealed the win on a last hole birdie. But if anyone wants to play any night and I'm online just send an invite.

[Wilk5280]

When does the weekly end? I'm getting back in town tonight and may try to cram it in.

[Danimal]

I think technically it ends sometime on Monday

JC I am up for some match play. I plan on running a DSP Match play tournament in May once I get back from my golf trip so practice would be good.

[Diablo25]

Finally getting some time to play a round of the weekly. Had a doubleheader on the road today and I'm finally home and ready to hit the links!

[Danimal]

I just crash and burned on my 3rd and 4th round of the weekly. It's also kind of discouraging to see a -23 as the leader after 3 rounds. No offense to Divot, JC and the 2 or 3 other Elite players but I was hoping for more realistic scores and a -30 tournament leader is not really what I had in mind.

I'm also disappointed only 16 guys are in the weekly when we have guys waiting to get in. Of those 16 guys about 4 or 5 have only played a single round. We had at least 5 DNF's in week 1. Some guys in the club I haven't seen play in a while. If you're not going to play then please step aside and let someone from DSP 2 in the club.

An before anyone jumps down my throat about other stuff going on. I get it, I don't expect everyone to play everyday and each weekly event but some guys haven't played in any events in a while.

[Diablo25]

Just had a freeze after 4 holes in the 1st round of the weekly. Going with a second attempt at round one. Just being honest about my entry. If that is an issue I'll withdraw.

[Danimal]

Just had a freeze after 4 holes in the 1st round of the weekly. Going with a second attempt at round one. Just being honest about my entry. If that is an issue I'll withdraw.

It's not an issue I had a freeze last night in round 4. That's why we put in the 2 tries.

[Diablo25]

Just had a freeze after 4 holes in the 1st round of the weekly. Going with a second attempt at round one. Just being honest about my entry. If that is an issue I'll withdraw.

It's not an issue I had a freeze last night in round 4. That's why we put in the 2 tries.

Sounds good. I went -1 so it's not like I'm a threat . Blew a birdie putt on 18 to goto -2. Oh well.

[TheTruth]

East Lake can kiss it! I don't know what it is, but I can't putt there to save my life.

[orthostud23]

I just crash and burned on my 3rd and 4th round of the weekly. It's also kind of discouraging to see a -23 as the leader after 3 rounds. No offense to Divot, JC and the 2 or 3 other Elite players but I was hoping for more realistic scores and a -30 tournament leader is not really what I had in mind.

I'm also disappointed only 16 guys are in the weekly when we have guys waiting to get in. Of those 16 guys about 4 or 5 have only played a single round. We had at least 5 DNF's in week 1. Some guys in the club I haven't seen play in a while. If you're not going to play then please step aside and let someone from DSP 2 in the club.

An before anyone jumps down my throat about other stuff going on. I get it, I don't expect everyone to play everyday and each weekly event but some guys haven't played in any events in a while.

There a couple of reasons that the "elite" guys are shooting low scores. The pin placements are not that difficult and with the green grid on all you have to do is get your ball in the correct location. (even if that leaves you a 25ft)
Turning green grids off would cut your strokes in half I bet. It would also have the rest of the OCC in arms though. Maybe we could collectively come up with a way to run a handicap system so that even the guys who are shooting over par are still competitive. If we took the scores from the dailys for one week and then averaged each players score we could have one that way and then assign a numerical handicap that way.

If no one has a gripe with this I will take the daily scores for the next 5 days and see what I can come up with.

[DivotMaker]

East Lake can kiss it! I don't know what it is, but I can't putt there to save my life.

Maybe not, but you killed it at the Daily at Whistling Straits...great round!

[Diablo25]

I just crash and burned on my 3rd and 4th round of the weekly. It's also kind of discouraging to see a -23 as the leader after 3 rounds. No offense to Divot, JC and the 2 or 3 other Elite players but I was hoping for more realistic scores and a -30 tournament leader is not really what I had in mind.

I'm also disappointed only 16 guys are in the weekly when we have guys waiting to get in. Of those 16 guys about 4 or 5 have only played a single round. We had at least 5 DNF's in week 1. Some guys in the club I haven't seen play in a while. If you're not going to play then please step aside and let someone from DSP 2 in the club.

An before anyone jumps down my throat about other stuff going on. I get it, I don't expect everyone to play everyday and each weekly event but some guys haven't played in any events in a while.

There a couple of reasons that the "elite" guys are shooting low scores. The pin placements are not that difficult and with the green grid on all you have to do is get your ball in the correct location. (even if that leaves you a 25ft)
Turning green grids off would cut your strokes in half I bet. It would also have the rest of the OCC in arms though. Maybe we could collectively come up with a way to run a handicap system so that even the guys who are shooting over par are still competitive. If we took the scores from the dailys for one week and then averaged each players score we could have one that way and then assign a numerical handicap that way.

If no one has a gripe with this I will take the daily scores for the next 5 days and see what I can come up with.

Maybe the green grid thing is a good idea now that we are getting better at the game. I know I shot a sub par round earlier with the grid off. Some of the guys that are still struggling may not like it so I can see the concern. I agree with Dan that some guys either need to play or step aside. I know some of us are thoroughly enjoying the game and playing in nearly every event (which is awesome) but I don't think meeting the minimums that Dan posted are too much to ask. Just my two cents. Off to round 2 of the weekly!

[Wilk5280]

I am finding the same as Digit as far as power and ability to hit strait. It seems like now that my power is at 90 I cant hit strait with any consistency at all off the tee or with my approach shot. 57% of fairway's hit in the daiky at WS and just over 70 in rnd 2 at EL and when I did hit the fairway's I stillmissed a lot of greens with my approach. Bogeyed 4 or 5 holes in round 2, to include 2 of the last 3 holes.

[Wilk5280]

I am finding the same as Digit as far as power and ability to hit strait. It seems like now that my power is at 90 I cant hit strait with any consistency at all off the tee or with my approach shot. 57% of fairway's hit in the daiky at WS and just over 70 in rnd 2 at EL and when I did hit the fairway's I stillmissed a lot of greens with my approach. Bogeyed 4 or 5 holes in round 2, to include 2 of the last 3 holes.

[Wilk5280]

DP